


The Woman's Child

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU Future, Character Study, Gen, Mycroft and Kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:35:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1436881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is DonnesCafe's fault. It is, it is. The result of a conversation we were having.</p><p>The child is Irene Adler's. Going by the statistical probabilities, the child is Sherlock's. But, hey--statistics.... And, hey--paternity...</p><p>These things don't always work out the way the numbers would suggest is most probable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Woman's Child

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DonnesCafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnesCafe/gifts).



 

The letter came to Mycroft with much accompanying legal folderol from the States—witnessed, stamped, notarized, signed, dated, along with a death certificate and a mass of paper work and introductory letters of various trustees. It was, when considered, a simple document, though, expressing love, and regret.

_I do not know which of yours she is. I never wished to. Over the years I have seen both mad Holmes boys in her eyes. If you or Sherlock wish to determine her paternity, that is up to you, as is the final determination of when, or if you should tell her._

_I understand Sherlock to be retired, now, and married, with children of his own. If my Astrid would fit and be welcomed, then please, feel free to let her join him. If not, I leave the decision in your able hands. It is not for nothing you are known as The British Government: your wisdom and competence is unrivaled. Choose well for her._

_She is a good child…far more so than I ever was. She will try her best to fit in and bring honor to whoever takes her in. So very Victorian, that—my little shy child, so unlike her wicked mother. It remains true._

_Tell her I wanted her—you and Sherlock alone in all the world can assure her of that in perfect good faith. Tell her it was all somewhat more dignified than rumors of beddings or turkey-basters might suggest. Tell her that I chose the best, hoped for the best—and got better than the best. Tell her she was loved._

There was more: a discussion of the wildfire arc of pancreatic cancer, a minor discussion of the child’s fortune—substantial and very well secured. Mycroft folded the letter, placed it with the other paperwork in a single file, and ordered Anthea to have it copied, scanned into the digital record, and the originals then delivered to his solicitors in Chancery Lane.

“She’s to arrive on the six o’clock flight from the States on Friday. Heathrow. The ticketing information’s included with the letter. Clear my weekend, then arrange to pick her up and drive her out to the estate. Oh, and call Mrs. Tegson and tell her to come up with a simple, comforting menu to see us through the weekend. She’ll be facing enough without shocking her system with steak and kidney her first night in. Beef stew, perhaps. Or even…” he twitched, “even hamburgers and chips. Comfort food for a ten-year-old.”

“You don’t want to meet her at the airport yourself?”

He gave her a very old-fashioned look. “My dear, I’m by no means ‘reassuring,’ even at my best. I consider myself the primary shock for which I must prepare her. Best she meet me in the comfortable environment of the Little Library with a pot of hot tea and a plate of ginger nuts to soothe her spirits.”

Anthea considered, then nodded silently, and left. A few minutes later she flagged his computer to let him know the files had been scanned and secured.

Mycroft acknowledged. Then, almost without thought on his part, his fingers traced the keys, and in seconds the picture filled his screen: a formal shot of a young girl in a neat black and white school uniform, hands clasped in front of her, wide mouth set and still, blue eyes dark. Her hair was a rich russet—too brown to be considered ginger, too ginger to be considered brown.

Chestnut, he thought. Like horses. Like new conkers.

Irene Adler’s daughter, Astrid Lucinda Adler.

Sherlock’s daughter.

Or his own…

…though that seemed by far the less likely outcome: one willingly given tube of sperm, offered to the brightest woman he’d ever met. It had seemed a fitting enough tribute to a brilliant opponent turned ally…and, after all, Sherlock was the more likely to succeed. Proximity and repetition ought to count for something, after all.

He studied the long, delicate bones, the high cheekbones, the child’s tip-tilted nose, as snub as Sherlock’s had been. Yes, he thought. Sherlock was by far the more likely father…

oOo

He called Sherlock to explain. Sherlock shouted a bit, and huffed a bit, and argued that it was outrageous a bit, and complained that it was entirely inconvenient of Irene Adler to die…but agreed that, if Janine didn’t mind, the cottage in Sussex was probably the best place for the child, all said and done. After all, what was one more?

He didn’t ask for a paternity test. He could figure the statistical odds as well as Mycroft. Even if Ms. Adler’s doctor had properly diluted his brother’s single sample and there had been multiple tries, it was still a matter of several dozen chances to perhaps ten. And, really, what did it matter? Sherlock and Janine were happy as clams with their thundering herd of offspring stampeding over the downs and splashing along the shore.

Later that day Mycroft’s phone vibrated. He slipped it out of his pocket and read the text message.

_Janine says, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’ Send her down as soon as convenient. SH_

And that, Mycroft thought, was that. All resolved in time for tea.

oOo

He waited for the girl in the Little Library, where he’d first met her mother. He loved the room. It was one of the most comfortable on the estate, added toward the end of the Victorian era. The wide leaded windows, hinting at Elizabethan grandeur while supplying modern strength and size and light, not to mention diamond purity of glass, were alluring on their own, without mention of the hydrangea bushes and the well-tended lawns beyond. The table, generous for four but small enough to still be pleasant for one, sat under those windows. Comfortable chairs sat by the fireplace.

Mrs. Tegson had put out a platter of sandwiches—roast beef, ham and cheese, egg mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise—a chopped tomato salad, a bowl of fruit, and three pitchers: water, milk, and orange juice. At the back, just under the windows, was a platter with biscuits: ginger nuts, shortbread sandwiches with raspberry jam filling, and chocolate chip. Mycroft, studying the arrayed foods, felt that even a fussy child should be able to find something to eat.

He’d decided to combine propriety, convenience, and his own odd desire to…well… not, he supposed, charm the child, but at least not frighten her into fits… and had put on proper country attire. Not even his best, but the classic broken-in, comfortable tweeds and corduroy that shouted “country squire on a weekend at home.” The trousers were a soft, grey-gold mossy color, a bit sage, a bit olive, a lot fern. His weskit matched, and he wore his pocket watch on a simple, single red-gold chain with a fob made of a nut-brown jade ojime carved as a mouse. His tweed jacket was sand and sage and oaken brown, with tiny flecks of green and gold. After a long debate with himself he’d left his collar open and his tie on its hook in his wardrobe.

When you are considered the most dangerous man in England—when a child's mother may have told Halloween stories with you in the role of chief antagonist—a bit of effort to soften your edge seems called for. Doesn’t it? Or does it?

He wasn’t sure.

He sat where he’d sat to deal with her mother, sitting where he could watch the entrance, not really considering that this in its own right might be intimidating. It never occurred to him not to dominate the room and observe the entrances. Not even in the interests of softening the edges.

She came in behind Anthea, who swanned in with a smile, and seemed to be radiating her best Mrs. Peel aura…which was indicative of something. He wasn’t sure what until she turned to the child and grinned, pointing at Mycroft. “There he is. Just like I told you: all in a fret and wearing his most stuffy, country-gentleman clothes hoping you’ll be soothed. Jeans would not have occurred to him.”

She was a very still child: upright, poised, eyes moving but face almost as placid as a porcelain statue of the Virgin. She studied him, flicked Anthea a considering smile, then returned her attention to Mycroft. After a moment she said, “I don’t think he’d be comfortable in jeans, ma’am. Except…” she hesitated, frowned, and said directly to him, “I think you’d wear them when they were absolutely the right choice. Doing work…dirty work. Or with people who wear them all the time themselves—truckers, maybe. Am I right?”

She was…deducing. The child was deducing—and  a complex deduction at that! Integrating quite a bit she probably didn’t know much of—English fashion, the ways of conservative gentlemen of a particular age. He nodded, a smile glimmering in his eyes. “Quite right.”

“Undercover?” she asked.

“Ah, your mother told you that much,” he said, approving on the whole. “Yes. Occasionally when undercover.”

She nodded, and he could almost see her slipping that into an aide-memoir of her Mind Palace: Mycroft Holmes does indeed occasionally do undercover work, as Mother Told Me. He considered asking her about what training her mother had provided, then determined it was both impolitic and far more boring than trying to deduce it himself from direct observation. He waved her to the seat opposite him, and turned to Anthea. “You’d like to join us for some supper, dear?”

She snorted. “Not me. Back to the City, I am.”

“A date?”

She smiled, and didn’t answer. Not that an answer was needed. Anthea was never without a date when she wished for one, and she quite enjoyed going out on a Friday night.

When she left, he turned back to find the girl studying him. He smiled, uneasy but refusing to retreat before a child only slightly less than a quarter his age. He stripped the cling wrap from the plate of sandwiches, and pushed it toward her, along with a small dinner plate.

“Mrs. Tegson tried to make sure there would be something you’d like,” he said.

She cocked her head, and considered. “I think…the egg salad, first,” she said after a moment. “It will either be quite good or quite bad, and either way I’ve learned something.”

“You are wise beyond your years,” he said, smiling. “Many is the time I’ve employed the same strategy at official events. One never quite knows with tuna. Tuna can be anything, especially if you let someone with the title ‘chef’ near it. Egg mayonnaise, though, tends to encourage a reductive sentiment among culinary professionals.”

She gazed at him, clearly considering that speech—a speech he now realized was not what would normally consider appropriate for a ten-year-old. “I could also just ask you what’s good,” she said after a few seconds thought. “You seem sensible enough to let me know if there’s anything particularly icky in any of these.”

He was startled into laughter. “Hmmm. I suppose it would depend on what you considered icky, my dear. But…Mrs. Tegson has what I consider an unappealing fondness for sweet pickle relish on a ham and cheese sandwich, and she is forever optimistic that my guests will agree with her, while I do not. She puts mild horseradish cream on roast beef, along with tomato and lettuce, and is almost as conservative in her tuna as in her egg mayonnaise, adding only minced celery and mayonnaise to the first, and mayonnaise alone to the second.”

“That settles that, then,” she said, and selected a half a roast beef sandwich, a half a tuna, and a half an egg mayonnaise to add to her plate. “The food on the airplane was dreadful,” she told him with sober confidentiality, as though revealing a state secret. “I’m quite sure that rolls are not supposed to be tough, and turkey’s not supposed to squish.”

“Well spotted,” he said, serving himself the half-sandwiches she had left. He served himself salad, then pushed the bowl her way, and was amused to hear her sigh heavily.

“Is it good for me?” she asked, mournfully.

“As always,” he said. “As I’m sure you know perfectly well.”

She grimaced. “Yes, but I was hoping as you’re a bachelor without children you might not,” she said. “It’s a bit unfair of you to know about vitamins and all that.”

He snorted. “My dear, I even know about roughage.”

She huffed back at him. “Mrs. Ansley downstairs knew about _roughage_ ,” she said, with a very reproving tone in her voice. “She knew entirely too much about roughage if you ask me. Though no one ever did,” she added, as one determined to be honest and honorable about it. “Knowledge of roughage does not recommend you to me.”

“I’ll have to see what other virtues I can offer.”

She smiled—a sweet, wild, gleeful smile, and in a voice that he knew had to echo her mother, said tartly, “See that you do, then!”

He shouted with laughter, caught entirely off guard. He considered. “What would you consider a desirable trait in an adult,” he asked, suddenly curious.

“Do you roar much?”

He made a moue of distaste. “Goodness, hardly ever. Nasty, vicious threats in a moderate tone of voice, sometimes…. I find a near-hiss occasionally useful. But on the whole I am a quiet man. You’ll have to look to your…to Sherlock for roaring. Roaring, howling, laughing, whooping, shouting, yodeling….he’s quite expressive. Always was, and family life out on the Downs has only increased the tendency. He should satisfy your longing.”

She bit her tuna sandwich, pretending not to notice when he simply scooped up a spoon of the chopped salad and tipped it onto the side of her plate. After she’d eaten half the food on the plate in silence, she asked if he’d pour her some juice. When he had, she drank some down, then said, “What’s he like?”

“Tall. Brilliant. Loves his family.” Mycroft considered. “Happier than he used to be,” he said, more slowly. “I don’t know what your mother told you about Sherlock. She knew him only at the very start of a period of change. He’s much different to what he was as a younger man, and his marriage and his family have only increased that.”

“It’s a large family?”

“Yes. Up to five, with twins on the way, and no sign of stopping,” Mycroft said. “You’ll be the oldest, though. That will probably help. Easier to maintain some space of your own, set a few rules of your own that way. They’ve got a cottage, and have added to it, and bought up the neighboring farm, and Sherlock keeps bees and Janine keeps chickens, and they all keep horses and ponies, and I think Sherlock’s even invested in a flock of sheep this past year. Oh, and dogs. And cats.” He laughed softly to himself. “Even goldfish. Plenty of countryside, plenty of shore line, and Sherlock makes bloody damned sure they’ve got the best internet connection south of Whitehall. You’ll like it.”

Her lips tightened. “Yes, sir.”

“Really—I do think you will,” he said, feeling a bit of sympathy. “The first few weeks will be like wading into the ocean—you’ll get knocked over by the waves a good deal more than you’d like. But you’ll find your feet, you’ll learn to crest the waves, and the next thing you know you’ll never want to leave.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak. He drew over the plate of biscuits, then, and opened up the safer topic of the nature of the perfect biscuit. They were in agreement that there was no one perfect biscuit, but that there were examples of perfect biscuits of their type. Mrs. Tegson’s ginger nuts were exemplary, her shortbread with jam actual perfection, but her chocolate chips merely serviceable. Their judgment was unanimous.

“Do you want me to show you your room,” Mycroft asked. He’d expected to let Anthea or Mrs. Tegson show the child up, but it seemed unnecessarily stuffy when they were getting on so well.

She nodded, and reached for her little pull-bag, seeming surprised when Mycroft took it for her first. She followed him into the Long Hall, to the Foyer, to the Great Hall with the stairs. Halfway up, on the mid-flight landing, she looked at the high platform with a bench, then a tall expanse of wainscoting, then a platform top holding a bronze bust, but otherwise unoccupied. She tugged his sleeve, and said, softly, “Does anyone go up there?”

He frowned, and said, “Well, Tim Tegson goes up once a month or so to dust….”

“No. Can _I_ go up there?”

He cocked his head, and said, “I don’t know. Can you get up there?”

She nodded, stripped off her tidy, prim travel coat for the first time since arriving. She folded it neatly.

Underneath she was wearing black leggings, and a muted pink sweater-dress. She heeled off her Mary Janes. Then she took a breath, and with a sprint and a bounce and a highly effective push-up, she was up on the platform, sitting cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped together under her sharp little chin. She was taller than he was, sitting up there, and she looked down at him.

“My word,” he said, genuinely impressed. “An athlete.”

She shook her head, and said, in awed tones, “I could _read_ here.”

And then he remembered…

“I know an even better place,” he said.

“Honest?”

He smiled. “Honest and true. Would you like to see?”

She nodded, and slipped down like a salmon hatchling slipping down a ladder toward the sea. He took her past her room, where they left the rolly-bag, and then cut through the Dash that connected the New Wing with the Old Manor, and around to the old solar—and through there to the priest’s hole, which was much nicer than a priest hole ought to be because the Cavalier ancestor who’d had it put in had used it more often to entertain his paramours than to hide renegade priests. It was a perfect little gem of a room with a window that had been added later, all of it the size of a cupboard, but done in velvet and oriental carpeting, with its own tiny tiled coal stove covered in blue and white floral arabesques.

“Like it?” Mycroft asked, already knowing the answer as the girl turned and turned in amazement.

“This is yours? You got to hide here growing up?”

“If Mummy and Father had wanted Sherlock and me to grow up here, it would probably have been my favorite place. They preferred the dower house.” He shrugged. “I spent a lot of time up trees and hiding in the attic, there.”

She looked at him with sympathy. “That’s horrid. I’m so sorry!”

“So was I,” he admitted. “But in retrospect I believe growing up in the dower house was good for both me and for Sherlock.”

She sighed. “Too many things are good for you without being fun,” she said. Then, tentatively, “When do I have to go to…them?”

“To Sherlock and his family?”

She nodded.

“Any time this weekend, really…”

“Can I…stay here a day or so? I’m just…tired.”

“Of course,” he said, thinking of the flight from New York City. “I’ll call Sherlock and work something out.”

Then he took her back to her room, which was quite nice in its own way…though he did wonder why it had never occurred to him to put a ten-year-old girl in a perfect little octagonal priest-hole with a window that looked out through a tangle of rambling roses at the rolling pastures around the estate.

oOo

_“Brother-mine?”_

_“Mike? Is that you? Hold on, hold on, Aelfric, would you stop shouting, Da’s trying to talk here, Aelf, **shut it!** Thank you. Mike? Is that you?”_

_“Yes, Sherlock. It’s me. I’ve a favor to ask.”_

_“Good, as I’ve one to beg in return. We’ve got stomach flu down here, and Janine and I were wondering…”_

_“Ah. I think two hearts beat as one. Or more, perhaps. Astrid’s a bit over-tired from the trip and all the unhappiness before, and I think she’d enjoy a bit of time to recover before plunging into all the excitement **Chez Shay-Shay.** Considering your flu—perhaps we might all choose to let her stay with me for a few days?”_

_“A week, minimum. You don’t know what it’s like when flu starts running through this mob. Tadwyn, get down from there. Tad… **TAD! Janine, get Tad before he…hell!** Mike, I’ve got to go. Aim for next weekend at the soonest…”_

Sherlock had hung up before Mycroft could say another word.

oOo

She was a quiet thing, he realized. That weekend she hovered, trying to keep out of sight, until he beckoned her near at breakfast. They ate toast—he liked fig jam, she liked strawberry, both liked soft-cooked eggs with buttered soldiers. She quickly decided that breakfast tea was “awesome.” He decided he found her fierce New York accent charming, especially as she quickly started picking up English vocabulary and inflections. The resulting patchwork delighted him; her clever, conscious awareness of her own language skills, and the wit she applied to her efforts was entrancing.

“Mom said I had it from…my father,” she said. Then, warily—“From one of you.”

“Ah,” he said. “She told you that much, then?”

“All of it, I think, before she…” She ducked over her teacup, using it as camouflage for grief swallowed down. After a moment she said, “Do you know which of you….?”

“No. Do you?”

She shook her head.

“We can find out quite easily, if you like,” he said.

She shook her head harder. “Don’t care,” she said, angrily.

“Why not?”

“Won’t change anything,” she said. “Won’t change that Mom’s…”

“No. It won’t.” He cocked his head, and studied her. “I won’t make you learn, you know. But—if you do, you can still go to Sherlock.” He smiled, sadly. “I do know my limits. And, really—the odds are in your favor. But even if you decided to look, and lost, they’d want you.”

She nodded, and asked, “What are you doing today?”

“Morning is work, I’m afraid: four hours in my private office. You might want to enjoy the priest-hole. I told Mrs. Tegson to have the bed made up for you, and your things brought there, and I left an eReader set for my account. Feel free to borrow anything I already own, or buy anything you’re itching to read. Then lunch, then…I’m afraid it’s quite boring, but I was going to clean out my perennial beds this afternoon. You’re welcome to join me, though.”

She did. She found his copy of _Kim_ , by Kipling, and started reading it, “Because I liked the Jungle Books,” and she got far enough in to be fascinated. So they talked about the Raj and the transfer of power in the middle of the last century, and Indian liberation, and Ghandi, and then went out into the garden and she grilled him about Indian languages (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families, and then the individual languages) and Mycroft told her she was a very well-behaved child in Rajasthani, and then she found a fast little sage-green grass snake and caught it, and he let it slide and glide between his fingers and told her about Sherlock’s passion for snake-catching as a boy. They let the creature go again by the lilac, near where the peonies would come up later in springtime.

She followed him to the compost heap out past the stable, and then dragged him into the stable to see the few horses he kept. (“No time to ride, for the most part, I’m afraid, though my doctor wishes I’d _make_ time…. I told him I’d be glad to if he’d bloody well handle Putin’s latest hijinks… Sherlock’s got a stable-full, though. Daresay you’ll never be out of the saddle, lucky girl!” Then he’d sighed, finding he quite envied her…)

Then they dug compost, and Astrid caught worms, and showed a nice Holmesian lack of squeamishness—for even Mycroft had never flinched at a worm or two. One doesn’t grow up to be the chief spymaster of Europe building on a foundation of squeamishness.

That night he called around to his neighbors and found that one had a suitable Shetland pony for a beginner, and had it brought over on loan. The next morning he took her out to the paddock and introduced the two, showing her how to groom her mount and put on the tack, and how to take it over to the mounting block so she could get astride. And then he made her miserable for an hour as he carefully taught her proper stance and “toes up, heels down, back straight, eyes ahead, that’s right!” She was actually so tired she napped that afternoon.

In the evening they ate in the Little Library, perched in armchairs by the fire place, discussing the coming week, in London. Then both curled up in their chairs, each with an eReader, and Mycroft put on his favorite music.

After two hours he looked over, and saw she’d fallen fast asleep. He carried her to the priest’s-hole, and put her to bed himself.

oOo

_“Sherlock? Is that you?”_

_(Faint sounds of intestinal agony…)_

_“Sherlock? Are you all right?”_

_“Mycroft, this better be important.”_

_“Ah. Ill, I take it?”_

_“Mycroft…”_

_“Just trying to find out a few things. Will Astrid have her own room down there?”_

_“It’s a cottage. She’ll be sharing with Gwenlian.”_

_“Ah. That’s the six-year-old?”_

_“Mmhm.”_

_“Yes. Right. Well, that’s good. Good planning. And…schooling. I know it’s a bit much to hope for, but she’s expressed an interest in Rajasthani. I know it’s a bit of a stretch…”_

_“French, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Mandarin. We had to fight to get Swedish and Mandarin on the docket, Mike. And?”_

_“Horses. She’ll be able to ride? If there’s any difficulty I’ll be happy to contribute to costs…”_

_“She’ll be able to ride, Mike. The only real question will be if she can bloody keep up. Is that all?”_

_“Yes, yes. Sorry to bother you. You’re all sick?”_

_“Mike, are you sure you’re the smartest?”_

_“Very well, understood. I’ll just go, now.”_

He shuddered. Baby brother really did sound unwell, if that gagging sound as he finished up was anything to go by. Mycroft frowned, then, sitting in the office of the country estate. He could hardly claim Sherlock and Janine weren’t making appropriate plans for Astrid. But—

He sighed. He even considered at least having the paternity tests run. It wasn’t likely, but if he did buck the statistical odds it would give him an excuse to express a bit more interest. Maybe even arrange for her to spend time with him when he was in residence at the estate. Weekends, holidays…and he’d really enjoy delegating more work. It was time for him to train his eventual replacements, after all…

oOo

They drove up together in one of the big black limos, with Astrid peering over the edge, her nose just barely clearing the door panel so she could see out. As they came into the City, her energy picked up, and soon she was discussing everything she saw—asking about train stations and Tube stations and black cabs and landmark buildings. She made him laugh when she looked at the skyline along the Thames and said, tartly, that it was very odd to put the Eye and the Gherkin so close together—a vaginal symbol and a phallic symbol in such close range. Then, realizing what she’d said, she blushed…and then giggled when she realized he was merely amused. She even stuck her tongue at him when he suggested, smiling, that it was one thing to say things like that in front of an unshockable Holmes, and another to say it in front of almost anyone else, including Her Majesty the Queen.

“Don’t Majesties and all know about things like that?” she asked, pertly.

Mycroft allowed that they did, “but prefer to pretend they don’t.” Not, he thought, remembering some of Prince Charles’ private communications to Camilla, that such a pretense was really convincing these days. It never even occurred to him to be shocked that the genius child of Irene Adler and a Holmes Boy knew about phallic symbols and vaginal symbols. Innocence was one thing, ignorance another entirely.

Rather than leave her alone, he arranged for her to have the use of one of the empty conference rooms during the day, and had her set up with a computer. He jotted out an improvised game of Mornington Crescent, and asked her to chart the stops on a London Tube map, and to then write up a proposed evaluation of the rules of the game.

By lunchtime she’d generated a beautiful tangle of crossing points, plotting the path from Tube station to Tube station—and had determined that the game was a random walk in which players simply kept the game going while talking a good line.

He was so pleased with her he took her out to his favorite little bistro for lunch, and introduced her to all the waiters.

“It wasn’t that hard,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Once I plotted the stations it was _ooooooobvious!”_

“Obvious to you,” he said, smugly, “But I assure you, not obvious to everyone. There are people who grew up with that game who still don’t realize it’s not logical.”

They walked back to Babylon-on-Thames together, hand in hand. She spotted boys out in school uniform, and asked about the schools in London, and told him about taking the subway in New York to attend her private school. She knew the stops and the stations and when to switch trains…

She showed him how to herd pigeons. She assured him you had to do it just right, and then she walked, cautiously, just close enough, just far enough, and they both laughed as the fat bird scurried ahead of her, fussing and fretting, the sun shining off iridescent petrol-slick neck feathers.

For the afternoon he had arranged for a Rajasthani tutor to come over and teach her, to keep her busy. That and bought her a book of Sudoku squares, that she finished in a matter of hours.

She slept in the best guest bedroom, that night, and woke up in the middle of the night crying for her mother. He went in in his tidy woolen bathrobe and his stuffy heelless slippers, and sat on the mattress and talked—then, feeling unsure he wasn’t breaking the rules, but driven by her unhappiness, he pulled her onto his lap and talked more, rocking her back and forth until she relaxed.

Then, to his amazement, she sang him a sad, sweet little lullaby in Yiddish. “Mom taught it to me,” she said. “It came from the Yiddish theater, in New York…”

She taught it to him, laughing as he pointed out he didn’t sing well.

“You sing well,” he said. “You sing like Sherlock plays violin. Would you like lessons?”

He could feel her excitement at the thought, and worried. There had to be voice coaches in Sussex, didn’t there? It wasn’t Outer Mongolia, after all. And he’d offer to pay for the lessons, so Sherlock and Janine didn’t have to pick up the expense.

oOo

_“Mike, it’s me, Janine. Call back when you can…”_

_“Mike? Janine again. Sorry to be a nag, I know you’ve got to be busy, but I really need to talk to you.”_

_“Mike? Please?”_

_“Janine, this is Mycroft. You’ve got a problem?”_

_“I’ve got preeclampsia.”_

Mycroft’s mind raced through medical terms, scrambling. Blocked arteries? Early delivery?

_“Pregnancy hypertension? Can cause death? Miscarriages?”_

_“Ah.”_ He cleared his throat, embarrassed at both the condition itself and his own ignorance.

She laughed, fondly. “ _Ah, Mike, y’ silly clot, you’re not an obstetrician, fer God’s sake. I don’t expect you to be. It’s just—I’m on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. It’s a bad time to try to bring yer girl in here, and no mistake. Any chance the poor scrap can stay with you for a while longer?”_

He paused, thinking, then said, firmly, _“Of course she can stay. In fact…”_ He cleared his throat. “ _I…quite like having her here. But school. It might be best if we assumed she’d be here at least a term. It’s late in Hilary Term, but I can probably arrange for her to at least sit in classes for the rest of this term and the next in King’s.”_

_“Right enough. Mike, you’re a peach. I can’t say how sorry I am we’re letting you and the lass down like this.”_

_“Not a problem, my dear. No problem at all. Indeed, I find I’m quite enjoying it.”_

_“Yeah? Sweet kid, then?”_

_“Quiet.”_

_“Poor lass is going to have to learn to shout, then, when she lands with us. But at least she’s got you for now. So. Anyway. Sherl’s in the loo barfing his lungs out, and the brats are here, there, and everywhere in various states of sick and feverish, and I’ve got to go lie down for the next three months. So if you don’t hear from me, figure I send my love, and send in your shock troops if you don’t get word by  Halloween.”_

oOo

He told her about Janine over breakfast the next day, and thought she was taking it all quite well. Then they had their first fight over signing up to audit at King’s College over Hilary and Trinity terms, and about seeing a doctor before enrolling. He thought he’d won. He _should_ have won, he thought—against any of his subordinates it would have been a closed case.

As it was, she ended up half-way to nowhere, and he had to call on some of his best operatives to sort through the CCTV material and work out where she’d gone. For a novice her mastery of the Tube system was amazing…and her ability to improvise a bolt-hole would have done Sherlock proud. Anthea offered to pick her up herself, but Mycroft declined, instead putting on his best Crombie overcoat and heading out into the city, as he’d done far too often when retrieving Sherlock from whatever hell-hole he’d landed in.

He climbed down the stairs to the subbasement of the old mansion in Belgravia, and jimmied open the door, dodging just in time, before she coshed him over the head with a brick. He was glad of his training. She was fast, and she was frightened, and her mother had taught her ruthlessness as a survival necessity. Many men would have been dead, with their skulls staved in. Soon enough she realized who he was, though. She swore at him for five minutes, employing a lively blend of American English, American Spanish, Pidgin Japanese, and newly learned London slang. Then she threw herself into his arms and sobbed for the next fifteen minutes as he rocked her.

“I won’t go to the doctor! I won’t! You’ll have them take my blood and run the tests, and when you know I’m _his_ for sure you’ll either send me out there or put me in a home. I won’t. I won’t. Please, can’t you just pretend for a few more months?”

He wasn’t considered a clever man for nothing.

“I think,” he said, gently, “that perhaps we need to talk. You appear to be operating under a severe misunderstanding. Here, let me call the limo, and get us home. Then baths, and soft-cooked eggs with soldiers, and we can talk by the fireplace. Is that all right?”

She sniffled and nodded. All the ride over she hung on to his black-gloved hand.

When they were both warm and clean and dry, and filled with soft-cooked eggs and toast, and cozy by the fire with a pot of tea, he said, as gently as he knew how—and he could be as subtle as the serpent when he chose—“What exactly did your mother tell you about who you are? And about me and Sherlock?” As she sat up and began to marshal her facts, he interrupted quickly, saying, “No, spare me the indelicacies of _natural insemination_ and _artificial insemination._ I’m past fifty and know quite enough to serve us for the upcoming conversation. Did she discuss statistical odds with you?”

She scowled and nodded. “I’m probably Sherlock’s.” She hadn’t said his brother’s name often, he thought, or he would have noticed the resentment. Or…had the resentment developed over their days together?

Still… “The odds are, yes. That, however, is not the same as _wanting_ you to be his.”

“I didn’t think so,” she growled. “Not like he needs me, is it?”

“That’s not what I meant, my dear. I’d be perfectly delighted to find you were mine—and perfectly delighted to pretend forever that you were mine, regardless. You’re not unwelcome or unwanted in either my home or my brother’s…and you’re only being delayed from going to his because vomiting and pregnancy hypertension, like time and tide, wait for no one. Now, we had all rather assumed that of course you’d go to Sherlock: he’s married, he and his wife love their children, and I assure you will love you, too. I’m single, in a dangerous profession, and spend my life split between the City, the estate, and foreign travel—as little of the latter as I can humanly manage, but needs must when Putin drives. It simply didn’t occur to any of us that you might even think of staying with an aging single man of my manner and ilk. I’m hardly Doctor Who with a Tardis and an adventure around every corner, after all.” He grimaced, and said, more softly, “I’m total rubbish as a parent, Astrid. Dull, stuffy, overworked, sedentary.”

“Mom was single,” she said, with quiet passion. “Mom was alone, with me. It was me, and her, and we were happy.” She knotted herself up, arms and legs all balled tight in the arm chair. “I don’t like other kids. I don’t want to share a room. I don’t like loud people. I like books and school and digging in the garden with you, and sitting in your kitchen here eating soft-cooked eggs or take out. Or walking in the park. I’m good in cities, I promise. And I won’t be any trouble. Just…” She ducked her head. “Don’t make them give me the blood test. Once you know, it’s over. None of us can pretend, then. I’ll have to be _his._ ”

He frowned. “You can’t really want me as your father…can you? I mean—Sherlock. He’s quite maddening, but he’s, well… he’s _fun._ I’m not fun.”

“I don’t like fun. I like interesting.”

“Sherlock’s interesting, too.”

“I like your kind of interesting.”

“The not-very-interesting kind of interesting?”

She jerked her chin back up and glared daggers at him. “The nice kind. The funny kind. The kind that…” She shivered, and hid her face against her knees, while her hand—a big, long-fingered violinist’s hand, he thought—groped for his. He took it, gently.

“But—if he really is your father? Your real father? Wouldn’t you rather be with him, then?”

“No,” she snarled. Then she said, “If I did, I’d hate it. It would be so awful to want him most but like you best.”

“You don’t know you’d like me best,” he said, helplessly. “You haven’t met my brother. People who don’t hate him adore him. And not many people hate him these days. John and Janine taught him quite a lot…”

“I know I’m a lot to put up with,” she said. “You didn’t ask for a kid—you only donated to Mom because she was smart and you thought she was clever. It wasn’t because you wanted me. But if I’m very good? I’d try, really I would.”

His heart broke.

“Budge over,” he said, then slipped into the arm chair beside her, pulling her long, gawky, coltish body onto his lap. He hugged her tight and buried his face against her hair. “Stupid child,” he sighed. “Stupid, foolish child.” He planted a single kiss on the back of her skull. “I would be honored to be your father—forever. And you have to get blood tests, but not paternity tests—and if they do learn whose you are, I’ll make them promise never to tell me, ever. Only you can ask. All right?”

She twisted and hung on. “You mean it?”

“Honor bright.”

She shivered, then. “For keeps?”

“For ever and ever.”

“You don’t mind?”

“I’m…” He was the one who shivered, then. “I’m happy, my dear. You’re the best present ever.”

“And I don’t have to go to Sussex?”

“Holiday visits. Maybe for a week or two if I’m called out of the country. And I’d make Sherlock and Janine your guardians if anything happened to me. But otherwise? No. No Sussex.”

“Can I keep the priest-hole bedroom?”

“As long as you live.”

“And help you garden?”

“Always.”

“And learn Rajasthani?”

“And how to sing. You can learn from the best in London.”  When she was quiet for too long, he asked, tentatively, “Anything else?”

She thought, and said, gingerly, “Can we get a dog?”

He laughed, then. “A pack. A kennel full.”

“One,” she said, firmly. “To go for walks with us.”

So they bought an English setter and named her Ann Bonny (Bonny for short), and walked all over the estate, and over half of London, and were content.

 


End file.
